my 2 cents' worth

Archive

Monthly Archives: February 2014

For all the years that I had been living in Canada, I had been told that a typical Canuck is usually obsessed with Canada’s national sport which is hockey. Some say that it’s almost like a religion.Such a belief has been ingrained since childhood, I believe.

With the recent Sochi Olympics and the fantastic job of both Team Canada’s men and women’s hockey teams in bringing both gold medals home, it only reinforces Canada’s reputation as the mother country of hockey, the Holy Grail in a way.

The televised footages of die-hard hockey fans especially yesterday’s Canada’s men’s hockey team’s gold medal finals with Sweden had been a revelation for me. Whether you’re watching them on TV or on Youtube,twitter,etc., it’s pretty amazing to see the lengths of how these fans will go the extra mile to watch a very important hockey final where national pride and reputation is at stake.

Since it was a Sunday yesterday, church attendance was reportedly sparse during the hours of the highly anticipated mens hockey gold medal game. Most of the pubs,bars and restaurants with big flat-screen TVs had been opened as early as 7 am(depending on your local time zone–which means that in the Pacific West Coast,it’s probably a few hours after midnight),offering liquor especially beer and a good meal…indeed, the Canadian way to enjoy watching a good hockey game.

Most of the fans would either take a few hours of sleep or not sleep at all to adjust themselves in watching the game either at home or at the pub in the early hours of the morning,considering that Russian time is different from North American time.They strongly believe that watching the game is their way of supporting their hockey players. The Canadian women’s hockey gold medal game with the US women’s hockey team was held last Thursday but at least in the afternoon–Canadian time.

For these Canucks, winning an Olympic gold hockey medal is a mark of success and pride. Singing the national anthem O’Canada is like a cherry on top of the icing of a cake.

With the recent Target store security info breach from credit/debit card use during last year’s Black Friday sales week in the U.S. and the discovery of an alleged Russian mob responsible for such a cybercrime, it’s perhaps time for the U.S. companies to adopt the European method of enforcing credit/debit card security, even if it’ll be a little costly to implement.

Here in Canada, the adoption of embedded microchip in both credit/debit cards is also used in Europe. It involves slipping the microchip side of the card to a slot in the card reader upon cashier checkout and typing in one’s PIN after which the transaction is finalized.

No more need for magnetic swiping nor written signatures. In case, you lose your card and someone picks it up, that person if he’s dishonest will not be able to use it unless the PIN was written on the card. Believe me,there are some folks who are too lazy to use even 1% of their brain cells to memorize their PIN. If they make it a habit to memorize it,it’ll be like doing it automatically,like brushing teeth for example.

Of course,if I happen to be in the U.S.,using my Canadian credit card would involve using the magnetic strip since the U.S. card readers are only programmed for magnetic strips being swiped upon cashier checkout.